The numbers behind clowns in movies

Regular readers will know that I often study topics suggested by members of the public. In the past, they have included subjects such as racial diversity, movie recoupment and public investment in the arts. However this week, most of the questions I have received have been about clowns in movies. Yes, clowns.

To be honest, I’m a bit confused about why the media is currently so fascinated by cartoon-like, buffoonish men with unrealistic hair who destroy any vehicle they’re left in charge of (maybe it’s got something to do with the American election?)

Either way, the end result of all the clown-based news stories is that I have put together the following movie facts to satisfy your clown cravings.

We’re in a clown movie boom

I used IMDb and Wikipedia to identify as many movies as I could which feature clowns as a major character (or key element of the plot). This came to 298 movies in total.

The oldest film I could find is a 1916 silent movie called The New Clown which featured an aristocrat who runs away to join the circus after he (mistakenly) believes he has killed a man.

However, it has been in the modern era that clown-based movies really started to rise, with 54% released during or after the year 2000.

Interestingly, the recent boom in clown movies is the inverse of what’s been taking place in the real world of professional clowning. In the 1980s the World Clown Association and Clowns International had over 1,000 members, whereas the figure is now below 100. Time magazine posits that this reduction in clowns is down to “higher standards for clowning, decreasing popularity amongst the younger generation, and an ageing population of current clowns“.

Another factor could be the increase of horror movies featuring evil clowns. Prior to the 1970s, there was only one horror film which featured a clown, and that movie stretched both the definition of ‘clown’ and ‘horror’.

The 1928 silent movie The Man Who Laughs features a lead with a grim carnival freak-like grin – legendary film critic Roger Ebert described the film as “a melodrama, at times even a swashbuckler, but so steeped in Expressionist gloom that it plays like a horror film”.

Almost half of all movies featuring clowns that were released during or after 2010 have been horror movies.

Do clowns ruin everything?

I don’t have time to provide data on “everything” but certainly it seems that clowns ruin horror films. I compared the ratings given by film critics and audiences for horror films featuring clowns between 1996 and 2016, and then for all horror films over the same period.

Both groups felt that clowns were not a welcome addition to a horror flick, although it was the critics who were the most anti-clown.

Bringing the horror circus to your living room

Now for the big question of the week: if you’re considering ruining your weekend by watching a marathon of horror movies starring clowns, which movies should you pick?

Thankfully for you, I’ve put together a collection of over 56 hours worth of horrific clown horror movies to pick from:

The creation of filmmaker Michael Emanuel, SCARY OR DIE tells five interwoven horror stories that take place in and around the "City of Angels". A flesh-eating clown desperately trying to ...Read more…

Five carnival workers are kidnapped and held hostage in an abandoned, Hell-like compound where they are forced to participate in a violent game, the goal of which is to survive twelve hours against a gang of sadistic clowns.Read more…

Killjoy is back in the fourth installment of the demonic clown series. This time Killjoy is being accused of not being evil, since he let one of his victims(Sandie) get away. Killjoy must ...Read more…

Fifteen years ago, Edwin went to clown camp to fulfill his lifelong dream of bringing laughter to the world... but nobody laughed. Humiliated on graduation night, Edwin viciously murdered ...Read more…

After a hideous crime in a mansion by the forest, where a group of young people was found murdered, a suspicious clown tries to prove his innocence to the investigator that found him covered in blood.Read more…

A clown performer and his future brother in-law create a web sensation by dressing up as the infamous Wasco clown and posting pictures on social media. They unwittingly resurrect the real ...Read more…

Angela Nelson returns home to the place where she witnessed her family slaughtered by the notorious killer clown, Mr. Jingles. Accompanied by a team of paranormal experts, they set out to ...Read more…

Victoria is a bit sad due due to a break-up with her boyfriend, Matt. Her best friend Lilly tries to cheer her up, but fails. One day a strange character wearing a clown mask appears on her computer screen.Read more…

(Japanese with English subtitles) Based onthea popular videogame series, this film follows a group of small-town teenagers get trapped in a sadistic amusement park game that turns out to be a death trap run by a demonic clown.Read more…

Meet Carney Shuffles. Poet. Lean and slipper'd pantaloon. A pill-popping, child-killing, violent misogynist clown living in a trailer on the outskirts of a nameless industrial US city. Shot...Read more…

An unfortunate group of teens on a camping trip are stalked and killed one by one by a psycho wearing clown make-up while teens from a small town are attacked in their own homes by another....Read more…

A young man is taken off in a straight jacket. He has a fear of Clowns which haunt his Nightmares. Is this the right treatment for him?Read more…

To give you an idea of what to expect if you watch all of these clown-based horror movies, here is a word cloud from the plots, with the most frequently-used words appearing the largest.

Notes

The films referred to today are all feature films listed on either IMDb or Wikipedia which feature clowns as key characters, or as a major part of the plot. I disregarded films which have references to clowns or clown iconography but which don’t feature a clown in the normal sense, such as Batman (whose Joker dons clown make-up but is not strictly-speaking a circus clown).

If (inexplicably) you want to read further on the topic of clowns in movies, then here are a few links to start you off:

3 Responses

I’m surprised that despite all the discussion I’ve seen in the media this week about Killer Clowns I’ve seen no mention of where this whole idea of clowns as killers began. Terrifyingly it has its roots in real life and in particular in one of America’s most notorious and prolific serial killers, John Wayne Gacy. He killed 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 and buried the bodies of 26 of them in the crawl space under his own house in Cook County, Illinois. He was eventually caught, convicted and executed in 1994 after 14 years on death row. As serial killers go he was in a league of his own, one of the most terrifying and gruesome there was.

So what’s the link to clowns?

Gacy worked voluntarily from around 1975 as a clown called ‘Pogo the Clown’ at children’s birthday parties and various charitable fund raising events. He’d joined a local club for clowns known as the ‘Jolly Jokers’ club and he also sometimes called himself ‘Patches the Clown.’ The clown face and identity he devised was his own creation. He devised his own garish makeup which when you see photos of him in his Pogo identity online you’ll instantly recognise as the killer clown face. Indeed during his court case the press in America regularly referred to him as the ‘Killer Clown’. It’s no accident that killer clowns appeared in and became a staple of many horror films from the 1970s and indeed that they should dress and make up like Gacy’s ‘Pogo the Clown’. He was the real life horror, the real killer clown.